homegrown |
PAINT WITH ME
A Painter’s Perseverance Story and photography by Karen Ott Mayer
Everyone is an artist at Paint with Me in Hernando, thanks to the tenacity of its owner who didn’t let a pandemic slow her down. Lifelong artist Rochelle Carpenter reflects a tenacity born from true need. When she decided to open a retail paint and pottery studio in her hometown of Hernando, Miss., fulfilling a lifelong dream, the word pandemic figured nowhere in her business plan. She opened Paint with Me in January 2020 and hasn’t looked back. “I have always loved art and painting. I have always liked to make my own things, like homemade decorations or repurposed pieces,” she says. “I felt like this idea was really placed on my heart.” Carpenter studied art all through school, taking advanced art in high school, so expanding into an art career felt like a natural move. Plus, with an autistic son, she sought ways to care for him while pursuing her own passion for art as a stay-at-home mom. But after years of selling painted wooden art like door hangers, and taking custom orders from her home, she wondered if it wasn’t time to consider her own space. “I also sold through Commerce Street Market but just reached a point when I thought it would be more practical to 64 DeSoto
open my own shop,” she says. She began looking for a space and found a new building located just south of the historic Hernando Square on Highway 51. “It was a brand new building and I wasn’t sure about taking it on,” she relates, adding that in the end, she chose the space and began making it her own. “I literally worked on it day and night through January 2020. It took forever to paint because I did colorful vertical stripes on one wall and a mural of Hernando on the other one. I poured my heart into it.” Like any busy entrepreneur, Carpenter enlisted the help of family. Her husband, Charlie, supports her work by helping with all the wooden cutouts. “He works one week on, then another off,” she says. “When he’s home, he’s busy cutting wood for me.” Today, Paint with Me draws a steady and loyal crowd that shows up to either paint on canvas or pottery. The cheerful space is usually a beehive of activity as kids and parents gather around tables to create their own art. Carpenter hosts events and celebrations from birthday parties to girls-night-out parties.
